Shirley
Shirley has arrived! Brilliant young heiress Shirley Keeldar shows up about a third of the way through Charlotte Bronte’s Shirley, just when she’s most needed, for our erstwhile heroine, Caroline, had fallen into the Depths of Despair following her crushing separation from her beloved cousin Robert Moore, who she thinks doesn’t return her love. Shirley Keeldar arrives as a breath - nay, a whirlwind - of fresh air, blowing all before her with her good cheer.
“Business! Really the word makes me conscious that I am indeed no longer a girl, but quite a woman and something more. I am esquire! Shirley Keeldar, Esquire, ought to be my style and title. They gave me a man’s name; I hold a man’s position. It is enough to inspire me with a touch of manhood…”
Shirley rather likes to refer to herself in the third person, with male pronouns, as “Captain Keeldar.” She also, when she first means pretty blonde Caroline, makes for her a little bouquet, and “tied it with silk from her work-box, and placed it on Caroline’s lap; and then she put her hands behind her, and stood bending slightly towards her guest, still regarding her, in the attitude and with something of the aspect of a grave but gallant little cavalier.”
Someone ought to be building their career of a queer theory reading of Shirley, is what I’m saying. Even if the nominal action of the story concerns their hitherto quite amiable romantic rivalry over Robert Moore. They both realize that they both have a thing for him - indeed Shirley comments on it, which is a startling relief in a book with a love triangle - and regret that it causes friction between them.
“If we were but left unmolested [by Robert Moore’s distracting presence], I have that regard for you that I could bear you in my presence for ever, and not for the fraction of a second do I ever wish to be rid of you. You cannot say as much respecting me,” Shirley says piteously, and Caroline, chagrined, hastens to reassure her:
“I never had a sister - you never had a sister; but it flashes on me at this moment how sisters feel towards each other - affection twined with their life, which no shocks of feeling can uproot, which little quarrels only trample and instant, that it may spring more freshly when the pressure is removed; affection that no passion can ultimately outrival, with which even love itself cannot do more than compete in force and truth. Love hurts us so, Shirley. It is so tormenting, so racking, and it burns away our strength with its flame. In affection is no pain and no fire, only sustenance and balm. I am supported and soothed when you - that is, you only - are near, Shirley.”
The book is also extremely useful to my plans for a Civil War book in that Caroline is a period depiction of what we would now call depression. As Caroline says, “I think I grow what is called nervous. I see things under a darker aspect that I used to do. I have fears I never used to have - not of ghosts, but of omens and disastrous events; and I have an inexpressible weight on my mind which I would give the world to shake off, and I cannot do it… Moonlight, which I used to think mild, now only looks mournful to me. Is this weakness of mind, Mrs. Pryor, or what is it? I cannot help it; I often struggle against it. I reason; but reason and effort make no difference.”
When I read this I punched the air and yelled, “Charlotte Bronte channels the DSM!”
My current expectation is that the book will end with Caroline marrying Moore and Shirley marrying some hitherto unknown fellow, and the two of them stay in the same neighborhood and remain friends all down the years and possibly live together once their husbands have expired. But after Villette I have no trust in Charlotte Bronte's benevolence with regards to endings, so we'll see.
“Business! Really the word makes me conscious that I am indeed no longer a girl, but quite a woman and something more. I am esquire! Shirley Keeldar, Esquire, ought to be my style and title. They gave me a man’s name; I hold a man’s position. It is enough to inspire me with a touch of manhood…”
Shirley rather likes to refer to herself in the third person, with male pronouns, as “Captain Keeldar.” She also, when she first means pretty blonde Caroline, makes for her a little bouquet, and “tied it with silk from her work-box, and placed it on Caroline’s lap; and then she put her hands behind her, and stood bending slightly towards her guest, still regarding her, in the attitude and with something of the aspect of a grave but gallant little cavalier.”
Someone ought to be building their career of a queer theory reading of Shirley, is what I’m saying. Even if the nominal action of the story concerns their hitherto quite amiable romantic rivalry over Robert Moore. They both realize that they both have a thing for him - indeed Shirley comments on it, which is a startling relief in a book with a love triangle - and regret that it causes friction between them.
“If we were but left unmolested [by Robert Moore’s distracting presence], I have that regard for you that I could bear you in my presence for ever, and not for the fraction of a second do I ever wish to be rid of you. You cannot say as much respecting me,” Shirley says piteously, and Caroline, chagrined, hastens to reassure her:
“I never had a sister - you never had a sister; but it flashes on me at this moment how sisters feel towards each other - affection twined with their life, which no shocks of feeling can uproot, which little quarrels only trample and instant, that it may spring more freshly when the pressure is removed; affection that no passion can ultimately outrival, with which even love itself cannot do more than compete in force and truth. Love hurts us so, Shirley. It is so tormenting, so racking, and it burns away our strength with its flame. In affection is no pain and no fire, only sustenance and balm. I am supported and soothed when you - that is, you only - are near, Shirley.”
The book is also extremely useful to my plans for a Civil War book in that Caroline is a period depiction of what we would now call depression. As Caroline says, “I think I grow what is called nervous. I see things under a darker aspect that I used to do. I have fears I never used to have - not of ghosts, but of omens and disastrous events; and I have an inexpressible weight on my mind which I would give the world to shake off, and I cannot do it… Moonlight, which I used to think mild, now only looks mournful to me. Is this weakness of mind, Mrs. Pryor, or what is it? I cannot help it; I often struggle against it. I reason; but reason and effort make no difference.”
When I read this I punched the air and yelled, “Charlotte Bronte channels the DSM!”
My current expectation is that the book will end with Caroline marrying Moore and Shirley marrying some hitherto unknown fellow, and the two of them stay in the same neighborhood and remain friends all down the years and possibly live together once their husbands have expired. But after Villette I have no trust in Charlotte Bronte's benevolence with regards to endings, so we'll see.